


It's Hard to Lead.

by FeliciaAmelloides



Series: A Oneshot a Day... [5]
Category: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Genre: AU, Gen, littluns, littluns running the island, reversed roles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-03-28 09:26:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13901094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeliciaAmelloides/pseuds/FeliciaAmelloides
Summary: Henry laments about the troubles of the island and tries to figure out how to fix them.





	It's Hard to Lead.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again (or just hi if you've been reading these one after another). As promised, here's the second update for today. I wasn't sure if I'd finish in time, but luckily I did. I was quite excited when I saw the prompt today since this is a concept I've been fiddling with for a while in my head.
> 
> It's an AU, so if it seems confusing at first then that's why. Also, most of it is internal monologue with a tiny bit of narration, so there's only one line of dialogue.
> 
> Enjoy!~

Chapter Text

The sun beat down on the island, shrouding the platform in pale green beams of light as it scorched the backs of the boys who inhabited it. They had been on the island for several weeks at least, and by now were quite used to the heat and the thorns and the insects.

At the beginning, everything had seemed so easy.

Henry, a brunette boy with a natural passion for adventure, had found a conch shell buried amongst the seaweed at the edge of the lagoon and had blown it to see if it made a sound. Within moments, a crowd of boys had gathered around him, mistaking his play for a summoning call.

Some boys were older like him; between the ages of nine and twelve he thought, and the rest were younger. The youngest boy on the island was only six. He was a sweet little thing, shy and unassuming, wise beyond his years. None of the other younger boys ever went near him, so he usually kept to himself or hung around the older boys. Today was no exception.

Simon sat beside Henry, saying nothing. Henry had always had a soft spot for the boy; he liked the younger children since they reminded him of his little brother, and he felt a little sympathy for the one who was always left behind. His cousin, Thomas, had also crash landed on the island with them, but he was away in the forest fruit picking. They had a few fruit pickers who worked every day in shifts to get food for the others, and they'd also assigned fishermen and hunters. Everyone's roles switched daily so no one got stuck doing the same thing, and anyone who wasn't working for the day was allowed to go off and play. This had been unpopular at first, but eventually people just got used to it.

Henry was still uneasy about leading all of these people, but he felt that he was doing well. Some people were unhappy with the way things were being run, however. Johnny, always the narcissist, believed that he worked harder than the others and therefore deserved more food. Henry had told him that this was unfair, but he refused to listen to reason. It was quite a dilemma, especially as tensions between them rippled across the island and started to affect everyone.

The signal fire was another issue. At first it had been a part of the work schedule to keep the fire going, but now less people wanted to stay on the mountain all day and he couldn't think of a way to persuade them. There weren't any benefits other than going home, and they'd spent so long on the island that home was a distant fantasy to most boys.

The littluns were a lost cause on work- Henry had tried to make the older ones do something, but the blond and the ginger ones kept getting into fights and disrupting other boys, the curly haired brunette kept getting bored and leaving early and the dark haired one bullied Percival to tears.

There seemed to be only two relatively sensible littluns on the island- one was asthmatic, overweight and had a variety of other strange health conditions that no one had heard of and couldn't do any work as a result, and the other was Simon- frail and prone to fainting. He tried to copy the biguns as they worked, but he was too short to reach the fruit on the trees, too weak to drag a fish out of the sea on spear and he fainted the first time he tried to hunt. Still, Henry sometimes wished he were older and everyone else was more like him. That would make things easier.

As for the biguns, most were sort of the same. Lazy, incompetent and obsessed with play, they would slack off more frequently every day. Rupert and Thomas were probably the best of the biguns- whilst Rupert was prone to day dreams and fantasies, he was surprisingly strong and dedicated to his work, and also one of the few biguns comfortable enough in his own company to run the signal fire, although he preferred to do so alone. Thomas, despite being weak and paranoid as a young child, had become much stronger as he grew and was skilled in all forms of gathering food. The only trouble was that he had nightmares as much as the littluns and was frequently haunted by monsters in the jungle that no one else could see.

And the worst part was that people were starting to believe him.

Henry sighed for what felt like the fiftieth time since they had landed on the island, causing Simon to glance up at him through the shock of black hair almost covering his eyes. "At least you're alright." He said softly, barely registering the words. The smaller boy didn't reply. He rarely spoke, probably due to his shyness, which was also most likely the reason for the others not wanting to play with him. It was a shame that this boy was the best on the island. Henry wished that the glamour he'd experienced when he'd first climbed the mountain still remained. Maybe things would have turned out better that way.

Maybe he wished that none of this had happened at all.

He wanted to go home, more than anything, and he knew that the others did too even though they didn't always show it. Despite that, it was sometimes so tempting just to forget about all of his troubles and join the others in their shameless revelry. But he knew that it had to stop. They had to keep working to survive, and he needed to make them know that. He just didn't know how.

The brunette grimaced, lost in thought. Then a spark of inspiration hit him, and he knew what he had to do. He lifted the pearly white conch from the platform, rose to his feet and blew with all his might, releasing a low bellowing sound across the island. The sounds of several feet scampering towards him were soon heard, and eventually he had the whole meeting assembled. It was time to take action. If he didn't, then they died.

He knew how to fix everyone's problems. And he was going to do it.

**Author's Note:**

> Ooh, a cliffhanger! I didn't want to extend the story any further, so I left it there. Basically the concept is that everyone in Lord of the Flies has swapped over age-wise, so the biguns are 6-8 and the littluns are 9-12. Therefore, Henry and Johnny (probably the biggest mentioned littlun personalities in the book) have replaced Ralph and Jack, and everyone's mentalities and the way the island is run is different. The issues, however, are primarily the same simply because they can't be avoided. I really liked writing this one, so I hope that came through in my oneshot!
> 
> Prompt- Lotf but the biguns are littluns and the littluns are biguns.
> 
> Original Number- 154.


End file.
